


Proximity

by arcjet



Series: Cold Waters [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Post-Canon, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 07:54:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18245615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcjet/pseuds/arcjet
Summary: She feels closer to him when she’s detailing him status reports across a room full of soldiers than when she curls herself into his shoulder to sleep.





	Proximity

**Author's Note:**

> Did I actually manage to write a one-shot and didn't turn it into a fully-fledged story with 10k words of background lore for once? Did I also manage to use the dreaded c-word not just once, but twice without having a heart attack? follow your dreams, kids - they DO come true!

“I know you don’t think about me,” he snaps, pushing her back against the door with the whiskey bottle in his hand. The glass is cold and maybe he’s using a little too much force but she smiles up at him all the same. “When we do this.”

It’s added as an afterthought because she has killed and conquered in his name. He may be feeling cruel and exposed tonight but he gives credit where credit is due, and she feels closer to him when she’s detailing him status reports across a room full of soldiers than when she curls herself into his shoulder to sleep.

And now, this close together, the heat of her thighs seeps through to his legs yet somehow, he’s still chasing after her because her lips are demanding pursuit. His dick is straining against his pants and he notices for perhaps the hundredth time that those lips have been painted red tonight. He had learned only ten minutes ago that two hundred year old lipstick tastes like battery acid and aged wine. He tastes it again when she pulls him down over her instead of replying, and decides he would drown in it if she would let him.

She snatches his bottle out of his grasp and shoves him towards the table. For a moment, he’s falling blindly in his room lit only by an idle monitor and pulsing party lights creeping in through the bottom crack of his door. A chair catches him before he loses his dignity and she clambers onto his lap. His whiskey is now empty and the bottle slides unceremoniously to a stop where he’s resting his shoulders against the table edge. She makes her way down the buttons of his shirt with soft kisses and warm fingertips. They’re both out of uniform and she isn’t stumbling around buckles and zips like she normally does and when his hand creeps up under her skirt to rest against the curve of her ass he revels in the novelty of touching her, and not flight suit leather or cotton fatigues.

“Is it your husband?” He leers.

She snaps her head upwards. The bottle tumbles off the desk and they both flinch because they are used to hosting these meetings in the covert hum of a sleeping ship. Then the soft rumble of chatter and music remind them that tonight is different: it’s a celebration, and maybe that’s why he feels so loud and brave.

“Shut the fuck up.” She finally speaks and it’s cold and sharp. She tends to reserve her harshest bites for the din of his quarters and he doesn’t quite mind, not really, so he glides his hand up to the small of her back and hitches her closer, until the silk of her dress rests against his bare chest. Like this, he looks up at her and she stares him down, breath shaky and uneven. “Don’t talk shit.”

His shirt falls to the floor as she descends upon him, teeth nipping at his tongue then his jaw then his neck. Drunken and clumsy, he tries to reach for a fist of her hair but is halted by an assortment of pins and clips in whatever ostentatious cocktail party updo she had opted for tonight, so he resigns to tipping his head back as she slides to the floor to unbutton his pants. The chill of his room can’t penetrate the heat of his skin.

She’s satisfied now that she’s marked him and has turned chatty. “Do you think anyone saw?”

“I don’t know. Everyone’s wasted.”

Including him. And including her, because she lets out a shockingly feminine giggle and her breath is hot against his thighs. “It was a good party. Even Quinlan seemed relaxed, for once.”

Turns out, giving an airship full of soldiers enough alcohol to disinfect the Atlantic could transform years of ardent training into an ignorant, cheery mass who were none the wiser if their leader and second-in-command disappeared. He would think that could warrant a stern lecture the morning after, if it hadn’t afforded him this opportunity. And he’ll jump at the chance, even if she pulls further and further away as she sheds herself in front of him—shoes first, then no less than six pins from her hair, then flimsy patterned panties pulled from underneath her dress.

Facing away from him, she shivers when he pulls the zip down the length of her back and the fabric falls to her elbows and waist before crumpling in a heap on the floor. When she turns back, she kneels between his legs and brushes her lips against his inner thigh and goosebumps flair up in her absence. It’s unfair, he realizes. Her nails are digging into his knee and another hand is grasping at his cock and yet she is not quite there. A fly on the wall would see him and a ghost and she would be out of his reach even as his fingers entangle in her hair and bring her closer.

“Fuck.” She takes him inch by inch until she meets the fingers wrapped around the base of his prick. He curls his free hand into a fist around the arm of the chair because she’s a goddamn curse and the only woman who can remind you she’s not yours with her lips are wrapped around your dick. Fuck her. He hated her. Gave her every opportunity to leave because he knew from the moment she stepped onto his command deck that she couldn’t be worth it.

Maxson gave her missions that were impossible and prayed in his sleep that her return would be in the form of holotags in a box but again and again without fail, she would report in while craters burned into the earth and traitors rotted in soil. There had been no excuse not to promote her and now there were no knights or paladins between them.

His Sentinel. But not his.

He tips his head back and is glad he’s sitting, for once, because his knees are trembling as she bobs up and down. Time had escaped him—it could have been seconds or minutes or hours—and passed only through the sounds of his strained exhales. Her tongue circles the tip before she plunges back down and picks up her pace.

“Christ—” He stops himself before her name escapes his lips. She pulls off of him and rests against his thighs, looking up at him and savouring her work with adoring eyes. She delicately tucks her hair, loose and wavy now from the heat of his grasp, behind her ears and straightens her back so when he bows over her, lightheaded and gasping for air, they’re level.

“Let’s go to the bed,” she whispers.

He moves quicker than they both expect; she yelps in surprise when he scoops her up around the waist, one hand supporting the underside of her thigh as her legs wrapped around his hips. He releases her onto the mattress and she dutifully begins twisting onto her knees, but he grabbed her by the hip and pulled her back until she was laying flat.

“I want you to look at me tonight,” he says, and perhaps with a bit too much vulnerability. His anger had subsided but not disappeared completely at the sound of her voice and had left him mostly with insecurity and reddened cheeks.

“Maxson—” It’s a warning he doesn’t heed as he squeezes the flesh of her thigh and growls.

“Is it the synth?”

The words had spilled out of his mouth like vomit and they leave on his tongue a sour, bitter tang. He doesn’t know why he’s decided to interrogate her tonight but there has been a pit of  _ something _ in his stomach since he first caught glance of her on the main deck hours earlier, drinking and laughing. He had only ever witnessed her so happy from afar.

“Does it fucking matter?” She hisses. Her eyes are alight with anger and she shifts up onto one hand to face him. “Maxson, I—”

“Arthur,” he corrects, and viciously.

“ _ Arthur _ ,” she says it like it’s a foreign word, and takes a moment to recover. “It doesn’t—you don’t need to—”

“It’s a yes or no question,” he snaps back. He’s made her flinch and he’s almost satisfied about it.

She swallows. Breathes in deep before opening her mouth again.

“They’re both dead. So it doesn’t fucking matter. Okay? So just drop it. Not tonight.”

She leans forward and takes him in for a kiss. Lips and tongue and no teeth, this time. Turns his scorn into a soft mewl, despite his resistance, though resistance against her fingers dancing against his jaw is futile at best. He mutters a garbled apology and she nods gently, bringing a thumb over the scar on his face. Something glimmers faintly in her eyes but he’s too drunk and it’s too dark for him to bother.

She leans back when she’s confident he’s forgotten his words, torso stretched out before him like a shrine. She had been soft curves and pillowy skin when he first saw her like this, but now she is marked and scarred like the best of them, and wiry muscles straining with tension. A testament of her service.

He runs a hand up a faded pink scar on her thigh and she grows restless, arching her back so her hips can meet him. They know each other too well and she only lets out the tiniest gasp when he pushes two fingers inside, digging her heels in to counteract his pressure. Spreads her legs wider to accommodate his pace and drags his free hand up to her breasts. He follows in kind and passes his lips over her nipples before descending into the crook of her neck. He can feel her accelerated pulse beat in time with his own, then faster and faster before she’s wound tight as a coil, whining curses and blasphemy, and relaxes into a flushed pool below him.

He doesn’t let her breathe before he snaps back to his knees and is guiding himself between her legs. She’s left without an anchor and snatches the iron railing behind her, closing her eyes with his final push. Her head arches back and exposes her jugular to him and she’s gone once again, because if it was Maxson that she saw behind her eyelids, she wouldn’t be so careless.

His initial pace is punishing, drawing out nearly in full before driving back in hilt-deep. She revels in it—they should be so negligent if it were a deadened night—the hint of a smile baring her teeth as her cheeks hollow out with gasps and moans. They reflect green against the terminal light and the flush of red across her cheeks is nearly black in the din but Maxson can’t help the swell of triumph in his chest because he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen anything quite so beautiful.

“You don’t think of me either,” she murmurs suddenly, and her eyes are cracked open and observing him. He slows down and stays close when pulls himself over her, hands planted on either side of her head.

“I thought we dropped it,” he grunts, through ragged breaths. His thrusts are shorter now, fucking her with hard cants of his hips, and his vision begins blackening on the edges.

She raises her hips upwards and hugs him with her thighs, ankles locked and heels digging into the small of his back, gasping when he hits too deep. Still, she manages a reply, fingernails digging into his forearms and eyes fluttering closed. “It— _ Christ _ —it wasn’t a question. You’re a fucking hypocrite.  _ Fuck. _ Fuck you.”

Beneath him, she’s shuddering; back arching towards him and eyes squeezed shut. She wraps an arm around his neck and brings him crashing down on top of her. He quells his movements simply because he has nowhere to go as she clamps down all around him and it’s a dangerous game she’s playing, locking him so tight when he’s seconds away himself. Her lips are at his ear as she whispers, violent and sharp.

“Everytime you take me to bed I know it’s not me you’re fucking,” she mutters. “Some fucking...approximation of me, maybe. I don't care. But it’s not me. I’ll never be what I am in your head, Maxson. Never. Fuck you for thinking you’re better.”

She releases him from her grasp and falls away completely as he spills himself between her breasts. They stay there for a moment, panting heavily and looking away from each other as the stars in his vision dull into the dark of his quarters.

“Fuck you,” he finally spits. Perhaps a single tear slides out of the corner of one her eyes but he is too sated and angry and sweating. “You don’t know anything.”

She’s bitter in her reply. “Do you?”

His jaw is clenched but he can’t think of a reply, so he reaches for a cloth on his bedside table instead.

“It’s fine,” she says abruptly, sitting herself up and running a hand through her hair. She swings her legs over the side of the bed. “I’m going to shower.”

She snatches up her underwear from the floor and disappears into his bathroom and he is left alone, save for the splatter of his shower and the fading chatter outside his room. The world spins slightly when he tries to stand, still shaky and weak and somehow more intoxicated than when he came in, so he collapses back onto the bed, laying on his side towards the wall. Pulls a blanket over his waist as if to shield himself when she emerges.

It’s too dark to tell if her eyes are ringed red but he can faintly make out black smudges around her lashes the door to his bathroom opens again. She’s backlit and appears as just a little more to a shadow to him, having helped herself to some black shirt she found within.

When she passes his bed, she pauses for moment and he squeezes his eyes shut, measuring his breathing far too slow for his protesting heart. But she moves on, gathering the rest of her clothes and picking the fallen bottle off the floor.

She twists the handle to his door before stopping again.

“Night, Maxson,” she says, wearily. “Happy birthday.”

He feigns sleep even long after she leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> I have so much to say about this and also nothing at all. thanks for reading, bye!


End file.
